While astrology and Human Design work from birth data, another approach reads purpose through the patterns of your lived experience. This is the method illuminated by Carl Jung and popularized by Joseph Campbell: the recognition that human lives follow archetypal patterns—recurring story structures that appear across all cultures and eras.
Campbell's research into world mythology revealed a universal template he called the Hero's Journey (or monomyth): the pattern of departure, initiation, and return that underlies myths from Odysseus to Buddha to Luke Skywalker. The hero receives a call to adventure, crosses a threshold into the unknown, faces trials and encounters allies, confronts a central ordeal, claims a reward, and returns transformed to share what was gained.
A Map of Transformation
This is not just a storytelling formula. It is a map of psychological transformation—and your life is already following it, whether or not you recognize the pattern.
Jung's contribution was to identify the archetypes—universal patterns of human experience that live in the collective unconscious: the Hero, the Mentor, the Shadow, the Trickster, the Lover, the Sage. These are not personalities but energies that move through us at different phases of life, asking to be integrated.
Reading your life through this lens transforms random events into meaningful curriculum. The difficult boss becomes the Threshold Guardian. The betrayal becomes the Ordeal. The talent you're afraid to claim becomes the Elixir you're meant to bring back.
Suddenly the apparent chaos of your history reveals itself as a coherent journey with a purpose you couldn't see from inside.
Follow Your Bliss
Campbell's famous instruction—follow your bliss—is often misunderstood as hedonism. What he meant was something more precise: follow the thread of what genuinely calls you, what makes you feel most alive, and doors will open that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.
Your bliss is a clue to your purpose. The universe conspires to support those who align with their authentic path.